Search form

You are here

Abortion rights

Elizabeth Schulte rounds up reports from around the country as supporters of reproductive rights made it clear they are ready to stand up to the right-wing assault. February 13, 2017

All over the country, thousands turned out at Planned Parenthood clinics to show their support for women's right to choose and to counter anti-abortion groups who called a February 11 day of action in support of the federal government defunding the women's health care provider.

Whether it was the huge crowd in Minnesota, where thousands gathered to face off against anti-abortion fanatics, or the counterprotesters in places you might not have guessed--the 200 people in Peoria, Illinois, the hundreds in Reno, Nevada, the dozens in Evansville, Indiana--the opposition to the anti-choice bigots on February 11 showed the huge support for a woman's right to choose around the country.

But not only that. The mobilizations showed people's willingness—eagerness, really—to take on the anti-abortion right.Read more

The Reagan years were an era of intensified attacks on women's rights, but resistance built from the grassroots stood up to the anti-choicers, writes Elizabeth Schulte:

An anti-abortion Republican in the White House, the U.S. Supreme Court within one vote of overturning Roe v. Wade, and anti-choice zealots attacking women's clinics--in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the stakes were high for women's right to choose abortion.

And the battle was taking place in the streets of many U.S. cities, after hundreds of anti-abortion protesters descended on clinic facilities, determined to shut them down.

Randall Terry, leader of the extremist anti-choice organization Operation Rescue, claimed the crusade used the peaceful disobedience tactics of the civil rights movement in the interest of "saving unborn children."

But there was nothing "peaceful" or "civil" about their movement--or their goal of reversing women's right to abortion and making decisions about their own lives.Read more